personally, I don't like any distro's stock install for a production server. There's always something I want to add to the stock install, and several things that I remove.
I like how Debian has a "minimal" install, which is fairly close to the minimum needed to boot, talk on the network, and install additional packaged. This doesn't include gcc, but it doesn't include X or any "desktop" software either. This makes it a good starting point for a server build.